‘IT’S going to win the Tony,” Rosie O’Donnell bragged a few weeks ago about “Taboo,” the new musical she’s producing on Broadway.

Well, that’s a nice show of confidence, Rosie, but don’t you think you’d better figure out a way to sell some tickets first?

Despite big ads in The New York Times, an e-mail promotion to nearly 3 million theatergoers and a press conference featuring O’Donnell and her star, Boy George, that was carried by nearly every media outlet in the country, “Taboo” is not selling.

A two-page ad in the Times’ fall preview section two weeks ago that targeted American Express card holders brought in only $40,000 the day it appeared and $70,000 the next, theater sources say.

The ad cost O’Donnell and AMEX $190,000. On Broadway, the rule of thumb is such ads should at least pay for themselves within two days.

“Taboo” tickets don’t go on sale to the public until Sept. 21, but the returns from these early promotions have been so poor that some are questioning if O’Donnell has any idea what she’s doing.

She is the sole backer of “Taboo” – a $10 million musical about the London nightclub scene in the early ’80s – and has been calling all the shots thus far. (She has executive and associate producers, but they’re said to be yes-men who don’t dot an I or cross a T without her approval and live in fear of her infamous temper.)

O’Donnell thinks Broadway promotes itself in old and fuddy-duddy ways and has said publicly she’s going to shake things up with “Taboo.”

But, according to many observers, she has already made some key mistakes.

First off, the ads for the show strike many as bizarre and confusing, and fail to convey what “Taboo” is about.

One ad depicted a men’s room, with a man urinating at a stall. The AMEX ad in the Times featured a man in a plaid skirt wearing what looked like a giant green potato chip on his head (or maybe it was half an avocado).

O’Donnell had a hand in designing both ads. She considers herself a painter and at one point hauled her advertising staff up to her studio on her estate in South Nyack to look at what one person politely calls her “creative ideas.”

Some staffers were dismayed, but nobody was willing to stand up to her, so the avocado prevailed.

A second mistake: She eschewed a direct-mail campaign because it was old-fashioned and went instead for the failed e-mail “blast.” But as all producers know, direct mail – discount offers mailed to thousands of people who go to the theater regularly – is a tried and true way of generating early sales.

“For a musical, you spend $250,000 and you can get as much as $2 million back,” says one producer.

“She should have offered discounts to everybody who bought tickets to ‘Urinetown’ and ‘The Rocky Horror Show,’ ” adds another. “If there’s an audience for ‘Taboo,’ that’s where it is.”

Theater people also say O’Donnell has spent too much time promoting herself as the producer of the show and not enough time promoting Boy George as its star and creator.

As she is discovering, producers, no matter how famous, don’t sell tickets.

“Rosie in the show – that would sell,” says a longtime Broadway producer. “Rosie producing the show does not. David Merrick and Cameron Mackintosh were the most famous producers of their day, but their names didn’t sell the tickets.”

O’Donnell, production sources say, is aware she has made some missteps along the way and is trying to correct them. New ads that will appear later this week feature a recognizable Boy George. She has also bought radio spots to promote Boy George’s score, something others say she should have done months ago.

Her ego is still huge – she’s the one who took the bow last week after her actors performed a song from the show at the “Broadway on Broadway” concert – but she’s starting to pay attention to the advice she has been getting from some of the more seasoned members of her team.

O’Donnell declined to be interviewed.

John Barlow, the show’s spokesman, said, “All of us are incredibly excited about what we have in ‘Taboo’ and are confident that the theatergoing public will feel as we do.”